


Infinitesimal

by eulers_identity



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, M/M, Mathematics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1213183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eulers_identity/pseuds/eulers_identity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's about holding on and letting go.</p><p>Upon his ponderings of infinity, Marco Bodt realizes something important about love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infinitesimal

**Author's Note:**

> (it's my first fic, don't kill me please) (and yes, I am a math major)

Some people think of infinity as a line that never ends. Others picture infinity as a circle, a loop, an 8 rotated by ninety degrees. Infinity was forever, something unbounded, something so vast that no mere human could depict its extent, nor pinpoint its beginnings or ends.

Everyone has their own infinities. The world is constructed of endless infinities. And once you enter an infinity, it can make or break you. To be stuck in a continuous cycle of joy would be the envy of millions. To be stuck in an endless torment of despair, not.

I'm stuck in an infinity of love. I'm not sure where I stand yet.

 

* * *

 

I quietly tugged on my winter jacket, scarf and beanie as my linear algebra professor dismissed us. Trudging out of the crowded, noisy lecture hall, I slowly made my way through the snow to the fine arts building, which, of course, would be located on the other side of campus.

I didn't have a class there, but it was a common ritual for me three times a week after my early morning lectures were finished. I liked to spend the rest of my day working on assignments and studying surrounded by the smells of acrylic and oil paints, bright colours, and warm atmosphere of the studios. Well, that wasn't the only reason why.

"Yo," came a voice, as I pushed open the door to the first-year painting studio.

"Hey!" I greeted back warmly.

There he was. Jean. My room-mate and best friend for some odd number of years. He was a painting major at our university, whereas I was planning to do a double major in combinatorics and computer science. Our minds existed in completely different worlds; his in one of colour and expression, and mine in one of numbers and calculations. I wasn't always like this. I gave up art in favor of math and science at a tender age, mostly under my father's influence. _"You can't make a living in the arts. Don't waste your time dabbling in it."_ I found a strange sort of comfort in numbers though, I won't lie. I like the concreteness, the stability, the security I could find. Mostly because I'm not an emotionally stable person. We were both daydreamers, and thrived in our respective disciplines when we were alone together in the quiet.

A hand touched my shoulder, and I flinched back into reality.

"Hey man, you alright? You've been spacing out a lot lately," asked Jean, whose hand, covered in smears of green and yellow was still holding firmly onto me.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Just thinking about... math again," I said, chuckling nervously.

A short pause. "If you say so."

I had a strange affinity for math, and an even stranger liking towards the concept of infinity. My favorite thing about infinity is its ability to make things that might not rationally come together, come together. Consider pi. Pi never ends, and within pi exists every possible number combination in the world, beyond our knowledge. If we were to convert the numbers into letter, hidden maybe millions of digits in are the answers to the questions we ask, to the questions of the universe; our favorite colour, the history of mankind, the date of our first breath, and the date of our last. And somewhere in this infinity, buried under all these words and numbers and answers, I can find my name and Jean's, side by side, etched into an eternity forever.

I sat at a small table pulling out my hefty 500 page calculus textbook, and my weekly assignment for the class. Jean returned to his stool and easel, but not before noticing me pull out my giant paperweight.

"Holy shit man. Why do you carry that around with you? Why did you even buy it? Just torrent it."

"That's illegal," I replied, shaking my head. "And anyways, I had enough saved from tutoring to buy it."

"Whatever. I'm just so glad I never have to take another math course in my life," he grumbled as he turned back to his painting, and I, my work. We worked with an awkward silence over our heads.

 

* * *

 

When I was younger, my mom and dad loved to tell me stories of how they first met each other and how someday I was going to meet the most beautiful woman in the world and marry her, just like my dad. I remember thinking that it was silly, because my mom herself believed that all those women in the magazines and movies were far more beautiful than her.

I first met Jean because we live on the same street and were in the same sixth grade class. Jean was seen as one of the "cool kids" of the class, though more of a lone wolf type. We didn't really ever talk, but our parents did. And of course, by our respective natures, Jean sucked at math. Like terribly. And so, our parents being friendly neighbors and all, were chatting about their kids, and Jean's parents learned that I was scoring 100 in the class, and convinced my parents to convince me to spend an hour a day going over long division and complex word problems with Jean. I had no problem with it; I was going to get paid, meaning I could save up and buy my own video games, and was really excited to make a new friend. Jean did, however. He hated math, and still does. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't because of my brace-faced, bespectacled, nerdy self.

Our tutoring sessions brought me and the boy down the street closer together. We shared a lot of common interests, and although I couldn't paint or draw, I loved art and reading about painters and watching Jean paint. Being French, I always believed that Jean was innately a good artist, perhaps a descendant of one of the Impressionists.

Our childhood years quickly brought us to our teenage lives in our small town high school, where I was incessantly picked on by the senior jocks who knew me as a math geek and nerd and loser and fairy. Jean tried to put an end to it, but like always he just ran in without a plan and that didn't really work, so I started to hide the injuries from him. When he found out, he was livid. Normally he had art club after school, and I had Mathletes practice, and we swore to always walk home together, but one day we finished practice early so I was waiting outside for Jean half an hour early. I still remember it clearly.

_"What are you doing here, loser?"_

_I turned around quickly, just as my backpack was grabbed by a towering, massive football jock. He threw my bag into the tree I was standing under, and swiftly proceeded to knee me in the gut. His friends just stood to the side laughing at my pain._

_"What? Aren't you going to call out for your little boyfriend? Or did he already break up with you?" the jock sneered, as he grabbed my collar. Tears had began to form around my eyes. The beating proceeded, and I quickly glanced down at my watch. 4:35. He's late. He was supposed to be here 5 minutes ago._

_What did I do to deserve this? Jean was never late. He would always show up on time, wearing that lazy smile as I'd run up to him and ask him how his club went. Did something happen? My mind started clouding with the different possibilities when suddenly a deep voice yelled out._

_"STOP IT RIGHT THERE."_

_The bulky guy quickly threw me to the ground and he and his friends quickly made a run for it. I turned to see who my saviour was. There, standing beside Principal Smith, was Jean, looking insanely worried. Did he actually think things through for once? Smiling, I lifted my hand and waved. He ran over to me._

_"Hey, are you okay? Please tell me you're okay," he said, looking extremely upset. Tears were forming around his eyes. Jean once told me that it was his job to protect me._

_"I'm okay now."_

And I remember that in that moment, I though Jean was the most beautiful, caring person I ever met.

 

* * *

 

I remember walking over to Jean's place in senior year one night after he texted me to come over for a movie marathon. When I walked into, he was curled up in his little burrito of blankets, lights all out. The TV wasn't even on.

"Heya Jean... are you alright?"

No reply. I walked over to him and sat down beside him. We sat in silence for a good five minutes before he spoke up.

"We broke up. Mina and I... we broke up. God, love is so stupid," he quietly whimpered. Mina was Jean's girlfriend of two years. Like him, she was also a member of the art club. I remember when they first got together, I was extremely jealous. Jean and I spent a lot less time together, and then, I began to realize things about Jean. Things I wasn't sure he was comfortable with. We hadn't really hung out a lot lately, since he'd been so busy with her. I didn't really mind anymore.

Jean gasped after I pulled him into a deep hug.

"Things'll get better. I promise."

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, he was still moping around. He stopped going to his club and left right after school. Without me. He started to avoid me, and everyone else a whole heck of a lot more than usual. It started to get on my nerves a bit. So instead of going home that Thursday afternoon, I walked to his door, knocked on it and was greeted by his mother. Who, of course, let me in, and I stalked up to Jean's room, entered, and locked the door behind me.

"Hey," I greeted.

He glared at me irritatingly. "What do you want?"

"What's wrong."

"Nothing."

"Then why are you avoiding me?"

And once again, there was no reply.

"Dude, just tell me what's wrong?"

Still no reply.

Sighing, I sat down on his bed. "Is it about Mina?"

He just looked at me, before barely speaking above a whisper, "Yeah. I can't get her off my mind. Love is stupid. Fuck love. Who needs love anyways?"

"You can't just give up on love. You can't," I said, meeting his eyes.

"Why the hell not? I lived pretty much all of my childhood without love. My parents don't love me. I'm not smart like you, or successful like my older brothers and sister! I have only a couple of friends, but none of them really like me anyways," he started to talk loudly, as he sprung out of his chair. "I'm sick of being the one attached to other people and getting hung up whenever they don't give me the attention and love I need?"

"You're one to talk! You know how lonely I've been since you got with Mina? It's been two years of "Sorry man, got a date" or "I already watched it with Mina" and I'm sick and tired of being left behind. Sure I'm smart and pretty sociable, but you're fucking supposed to be my best friend."

No reply. Part of me was really angry with him for saying stuff like that, so that I swore, but another part was worried about him. He sat back down. I just looked at him and sighed.

"Listen Jean... Love isn't a pie. You don't get to give it out to your friends in slices and when you're done you go "Whoops, no more!" and put down your tray and walk away and be finished. That's not the way love works. Excuse me for the comparison, but love is, to put in better words, like pi. The mathematical one."

A groan.

"It's irrational and it never ends. Love is stupid and crazy and it makes people do stupid things and act all crazy and feel jealousy and anger and you're not allowed to ever run out of it. There's enough to go around. And no one knows how it works. It just does. Love makes the world go round, and we'll never know why. But that's the amazing part about it. We don't have to. We're allowed to relax. We can't explain everything.

And you know, I know you may feel like you're not loved, but Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I love you? You're loved. Not because of the goddamn cute face you make when you're embarrassed, not because of the way you laugh, the way you smile at me, not because of the lame jokes you make, or even the funny ones. Just because you're... you. There doesn't have to be a reason as to why we feel the way we feel, as to why we can't be rational about everything, because not everything can be rationalized and not everything will be figured out. And I don't know about you, but I'm okay with that. I don't need to know everything. I just need to feel."

At this point I was running out of breath, but Jean just looked up at me, smiled a bit, and muttered a thank you.

 

* * *

 

Things got a lot better but a bit awkward after that. I wasn't sure if Jean caught my mini-confession in my rant, but if he did, it would explain things.

But like always, life continued and we made our way to university.

Every person we meet changes our lives. Maybe by a huge margin like with Jean, or maybe barely noticeably. Some people are catalysts, like Mina, who in the end, just brought Jean and I closer. Like two lines or curves, the connections and interactions we have with one another vary so greatly. Perhaps you and your soul mate are both linear functions. Maybe you share the same slope and y-intercept and you grow up together and everything is a fairy tale and every part of you feels like this was meant to be. But what if you shared the same slope but had different starting points and hence you never ever meet and you just feel like something is missing from your life and that things shouldn't be this way. And perhaps, we intersect at one point, and instead of holding onto one another, instead of fighting fate and destiny and the grip our  forward-thinking minds have on us, we let each other go, and never meet again.

We have to fight.

I fight everyday for Jean.

I wonder if he knows.

The funny thing is that every person is so small in comparison to our universe. But the thing is that every little thing we do can actually change the world infinitely and infinitesimally. Surrounded by "maybe"s and "what if"s and in our world of infinities, I often believe that we let fate dictate us too much. Surely we would end up together at one point. I'm not a firm believer in reincarnation or parallel universes, but wouldn't it be great? To have an infinite amount of chances to get it right, to be with the one, to be happy.

Infinite worlds.

There are countless theories of these "world lines" where our universe is infinitely replicated, with minor changes in each one. Perhaps in another world, your dog wasn't run over when you were five years old. Maybe it happened when you were sixteen, but you knew that it would've passed soon regardless. Or maybe you don't even have a dog, what with being deathly allergic to them, or perhaps growing up with a fear of them after you heard on the news about a woman who got her ear bit off by a dog.

Infinite worlds. Infinite possibilities.

In another world, you woke up late on that fateful first day of school, but in turn you never met the love of your life running to catch the same bus as you. And maybe you got depressed because you turned twenty-five and were still alone and fell into a bout of depression. Standing on the edge of your high-rise apartment, the door to the rooftop swings open, and lo and behold there they are. The person you missed because you actually woke up on time for once, just meandering and wanting to get a smoke in before they have to go to a blind date their parents set up. And they walk up slowly to you. And ask you what you're doing. And then so many things can happen. You breakdown and cry. You take a step back and meet your end. You run forward and embrace them in a tight, air-depriving hug because for so long everything just felt so wrong, so empty, but suddenly you feel that everything is in its place and the timing was perfect and that everything might turn out okay for once.

Infinite worlds. Infinite possibilities. Infinite intersections.

 

* * *

 

I look back at Jean, who's currently concentrating really hard on a piece of cloth he's painting. I smile.

Being here, I begin to understand what being "infinite" feels like. Jean and I might not be together, but maybe someday I'll tell him, maybe when he breaks up with his current girlfriend. In any infinity, there's no way of knowing for sure where we're going but there's only so many ways things could go. Everything's okay right now, and I feel a certainty with him. I don't want to mess anything up. There's a whole realm of possibility to explore though, and I'll let destiny guide me there. And if the occasion arises, I'll fight for Jean.

Perhaps in another world, another infinity, we'd be together right now, throwing looks of love and lust at each other. But for now, I'll let things be. I'll keep my love infinitesimal, and infinitely. I'll take comfort in our proximity, and in our friendship.


End file.
